|
Why are killifish names so long and complicated? They say a rose by any other name will smell as sweet. Going by the same logic, a Nothobranchius rachovii will look just as beautiful if it's known as a Fire Notho or a Rachow Notho. But to serious killifish hobbyists, sweetness and beauty are not just the things they are concerned about. It's important to killifish breeders all over the world that they are talking about the same fish when they exchange/sell eggs with each other. Common names can be vague and ambiguous. What's a Fire Notho to someone may be a Rachow Notho to another. It can all be very confusing if not for scientific names. Scientific names, however, can be quite a mouthful as they are in Latin. But there's a reason for that too. Latin, being a dead language, never changes so the scientific names don't change too. Scientific names consist of 2 names, the genus and the species. A genus name like Nothobranchius indicates the larger group that the fish belongs to. It is always capitalised. A species name identifies the smaller group, within that larger group, to which the fish belongs, for instance, rachovii. Species names are always in small letters. It is highly possible for different species within the same genus to interbreed. A Nothobranchius rachovii would very likely mate with a Nothobranchius guentheri and produce healthy offspring. But it would be almost impossible to get a Nothobranchius rachovii to breed with an Aphyosemion australe as they belong to different generic groups. It would be like trying to cross a dog with a cat. In print, the whole scientific name usually appears in italics. More often than not, killifish names also have non-latin words and numbers appended to them, for instance, Nothobranchius rachovii Beira 98. "Beira 98" is the collection code, Beira being the name of the village in Africa nearest to the pond where the fish was first collected from and 98 refers to 1998, the year the fish was collected. If you have a Nothobranchius rachovii but aren't sure where it's from, your fish would, by default, be known as a Nothobranchius rachovii (Aquarium Strain). Same rule applies if you cross one rachovii with another collected from a different pond; the offspring becomes "aquarium strain". Being living organisms, you and I have scientific names too. My scientific name, with a collection code attached, would be Homo sapiens Kandang Kerbau 54. The name Homo refers to the group you and I belong to, that is, "human" or "man"; sapiens is the smaller group indicating "intelligent man". It does not necessarily mean that we are all very clever but the species name distinguish us from our extinct cousins Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthal man) who was supposedly an idiot and Homo erectus (Upright man) who could barely walk straight. Kandang Kerbau Hospital was where my father brought me home from after I was born and he did that in the year 1954. But hey, call me Kwek Leong. Loh K L In the August 1997 issue of the GCKA (Greater Cincinnati Killifish Association) newsletter, Donna M. Recktenwalt wrote an excellent article (from which, much of the information shown here was culled) about scientific names. Visit "http://www.intellweb.com/gcka/names.htm" to read the article. |